One of New Orleans’s brightest culinary stars, Susan Spicer has been indulging Crescent City diners at her highly acclaimed restaurants, Bayona and Herbsaint, for years. Now, in her long-awaited cookbook, Spicer—an expert at knocking cuisine off its pedestal with a healthy dash of hot sauce, and at elevating comfort food to the level of the sublime—brings her signature dishes to the home cook’s table.

Crescent City Cooking includes all the recipes that have made Susan Spicer, and her restaurants, famous. Spicer marries traditional Southern cooking with culinary influences from around the world, and the result is New Orleans cooking with gusto and flair. Each of her familiar yet unique recipes is easy to make and wonderfully memorable.

Inside you’ll find :
• More than 170 recipes, ranging from traditional New Orleans dishes (Cornmeal-Crusted Crayfish Pies and Cajun-Spiced Pecans) to Susan’s very own twists on down-home cuisine (Smoked Duck Hash in Puff Pastry with Apple Cider Sauce; Grilled Shrimp with Black Bean Cakes and Coriander Sauce) and, of course, a recipe for the best gumbo you’ve ever tasted

• Over 90 photographs by Times-Picayune photographer Chris Granger, which display the vibrant city of New Orleans as much as Spicer’s wonderfully offbeat yet classy way of presenting her dishes

• Instructions that make Spicer’s down-to-earth but extraordinarily creative recipes easy to prepare. Spicer, who cooks for two picky preteens and packs lunch every day for her husband, knows how precious time can be and understands just how much is enough

There is something else of New Orleans—its spirit—that imbues this book’s every useful tip and anecdote. The strong culinary traditions of New Orleans are revived in Crescent City Cooking, with recipes that are guaranteed to comfort and surprise. This is some of the best food you’ll ever taste, in what is certain to become the essential New Orleans cookbook.

“This is a great cookbook, full of accessible recipes that people can cook from everyday.  Susan Spicer is a master at marrying exotic flavors with great Southern food.  She is a New Orleans treasure and one of the most talented chefs at work in America today.”

–Suzanne Goin


“Susan Spicer is a chef who dazzles the palate with flavors rooted in her beloved New Orleans.  Her long-awaited debut, Crescent City Cooking, is full of mouth-watering recipes and show-stealing sides, and her chapter on killer cocktails from Bourbon Street is simply not to be missed.  This book is one big party.  Congratulations, Susan.”

–Lidia Bastianich


“Susan Spicer is one of my favorite chefs in my favorite dining city in the world. Her sense of place and tradition is as romantic as it is alluring, and her recipes, basted with an incredible depth of flavor, are disarmingly simple to prepare. Susan's cooking celebrates the vibrant key of the French quarter, and the food in this book is tasty, delicious and exciting to make.”

–Mario Batali


"Susan's cuisine is a true journey around the world, blending soulful ingredients into exciting and original recipes.  Her love for New Orleans' tradition shines through her innovative cooking."

–Daniel Boulud, Chef/Restaurateur